WandaVision Episode 6 Recap: "Am I Dead?"

The Nineties have hit Westview: out goes the studio audience, in comes a post-grunge theme song and high jinks with camcorders. It's Malcolm in the Middle, but with two Malcolms in Billy and Tommy, and just as in that family, things aren't exactly hunky-dory since long lost brother Pietro turned up.

"Mom and dad have been… not fighting, just different," says Tommy. You don't know the half of it, boy. Vision's becoming unruly and untruthful, grumping about having to wear his Halloween costume – he's going as himself – and sneaking off to see if he can't work out what's going on.

Meanwhile, the bickering between SWORD and the three amigos of Jimmy Woo, Darcy and Monica Rambeau escalates. "Maybe it’s a good thing you weren’t here when your mother died," Hayward tells Monica, "because clearly you don’t have the stomach for this job."

That's not just evil, it's quite suspiciously evil. Jimmy, Darcy and Monica are summarily booted out of SWORD, but sneak back in after a small punch-up. The plan: Darcy does some light hacking to rifle through Hayward's secret files, and Jimmy and Monica go into Westview to sort out what's going on. There's one drawback though. Crossing the Hex boundary has started fiddling about with Monica's molecules, which tends to mean one thing in superhero properties: she's going to gain some powers of her own.

Pietro's getting a little bit too unpredictable for Wanda's tastes too. She wants to know exactly what he's doing there uninvited. "You tell me," he says. "If I found Shangri-La, I wouldn’t want to be reminded of the past either."

The details of his death are "fuzzy," he says. "I got shot like a chump in the street for no reason at all, and next thing I know I heard you calling me. I knew you needed me." Hmm. There's a lot of fun being had with the two Pietros this week: the question of exactly why he's apparently been "recast" as X-Men: Days of Future Past's Evan Peters since he (well, Aaron Taylor-Johnson) was shot and killed in Age of Ultron keeps coming up, and one of the boys declares something's "kickass". That's a little nod to the film of the same name in which the two Pietros, Taylor-Johnson and Evan Peters, both starred. Arf. It's as if Wanda's show knows that it's crossing the X-Men and Avengers streams, and that it won't be able to hold it together for too long.

Meanwhile, Vision's wandered out of the centre of town and found that the poor saps making up the numbers in suburbia are stuck like mannequins, seemingly too far out of Wanda's range to potter about like everyone else. Fortunately, his neighbour Agnes is stopped at a T-junction looking a bit lost. After Vision lifts Wanda's spell on her, though, she recognises Vision.

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"You’re one of the Avengers! You’re Vision! Are you here to help us?"

"I am Vision, I do want to help," he says. "But what’s an Avenger?"

This is not the answer Agnes is looking for. "Am I dead?" she asks. She tells Vision he's dead too, which is an extremely Halloween lesson to learn, and he resolves to stomp his way out of Westview and look for help. Unfortunately Vision and real life don't mix, and the poor bloke's skin starts peeling like mad as Wanda's magic wears off him.

Back in the town square, Pietro's getting to the bottom of exactly what happened when Wanda created Westview. The answer: dunno.

"I don’t know how I did it," she says. "I only remember feeling completely alone. Empty, I just… endless nothingness."

Young Billy, who's suddenly found his telepathic abilities – puberty eh, am I right?? – tells his mum about Vision's bid for freedom. Pietro starts running his mouth about Vision dying twice and gets blasted before Wanda sets about expanding the Hex to save Vision and apparently sitcom-ify the rest of New Jersey and, potentially beyond. Imagine that: the whole eastern seaboard trapped in Modern Family. Doesn't bear thinking about.

Some more thoughts:

Darcy got caught up in the hex. We're presuming sitcom-Darcy will be somewhere between Jess from New Girl and Pam from The Office.
A sudden jump-scare flash of bullet-riddled Pietro isn't the start to Friday anyone needs.
The Incredibles and The Parent Trap are on at Westview's town square cinema. Hard to dodge the feeling that we're being jabbed in the ribs there. A family of superheroes, yep, get it. But The Parent Trap? Are the twins going to sort everything out with a cruise-based double-cross? Or is it something to do with Pietro and his X-Man double?
Still no post-credits sequence. Yes, the credits really are eight minutes long. Ridiculous.